Tuesday, May 30, 2006

And why can 100 people read the same book, or take the same course... and only one succeed?

I believe it has nothing to do with talent. It has a lot to do with persistence, but that's not the reason either.

The answer - for our marketing business - is: PERSONALITY.

This is the distinguishing attribute between the winners and losers.

The world is full of people with similar talents. The internet is rapidly showing how very many of us all think alike. Millions of us write the same, spell the same [think how many people can't use 'lose' correctly and spell 'loose' instead], and produce identical web sites... millions of us. Identical.

To stand out from the crowd, we need to show our true personality, and the weirder it is - the better.

To see how well an off-center personality can succeed, take a long look at The Gary Halbert Letters. Gary - by his own admission - is the best copywriter in the world... and he often presents a crazy attitude in his writing.

But his unique personality shines through, and people hire him for millions of dollars. He's worth studying.

While you're there, take a look at the Rolls-Royce letters. Read and learn from a master.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

If there's one tool I absolutely can't do without, it's a tiny application called ShortKeys. You store any kind of text... URLs, signatures, sentences, paragraphs, names, unusually spelled names... under any kind of keyword that you prefer.

When you enter that keyword, ShortKeys retrieves your full text and pastes it into practically anything... webpages, emails, toolbars.

Now, that all seems very convenient, but unless you can remember your keywords, it's not much use. So defining the keyword is the secret.

I have what appears to be a complex set of keywords, but to me they are entirely logical. For example:

I use W to indicate a URL. then I used the first letters of the web site. So:wks typed will give me "http://www.kensilver.com."wct will type "http://www.copywritingtool.com."

Using this simple code, you can produce anything. I found my typing workload has decreased by at least half. And of course, I never make a mistake in important text, like my signature files.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

I wrote "How To Make $100,000 A Year Part-Time Creating Profitable How-To Manuals" about 10 years ago, and it was a very popular e-book. It's still available from me here: Home Publishing Secrets

I found one of the most effective ways to reduce refunds on a physical product - as small as they were for me at the time - was to shrinkwrap the manual. You can apply the same principle to any hardcopy product. Read more about that tip at Home Publishing Secrets

Saturday, May 20, 2006

I got a surprise today when I looked up my browser stats from visitors. Internet Explorer was top dog of course, but in 2nd place was a relative newcomer over the last year - Firefox. Here's the percentages for the top 5 as they figure in my website life: